Australia’s culture of killing native animals

The culture or vilification of kangaroos, as “pests” and their killing has become engrained into our history as a macabre type of environmental “management”. It’s rationalized as a human responsibility to control their numbers, as we have changed the environment so much, due to infrastructure and agriculture, to such as way as to encourage their overpopulation and breeding! They thus are condemned for over-populating and causing mayhem, including environmental damage and threats to other species!

The great Canberra “cull” of kangaroos is being considered again, in our so-called “Bush Capital”. It’s an oxymoron, and it’s using kangaroos as a scapegoat for mismanagement and human-caused environmental destruction.

(image: a disturbing picture of the kangaroo "cull", 2009)

In July 2015 Canberra activist Chris Klootwijk, 70,  was arrested for blowing a whistle during the ACT Government sanctioned kangaroo cull which hindered the annual shooting operation.  Klootwijk is accused of hindering the cull workers by making loud noises, which included blowing a whistle.

It is alleged that his actions were designed to scare off kangaroos, making it difficult for them to be shot, and halted the cull for about 45 minutes.

Chris faces fines of up to $30,000 and up to two years in jail if found guilty because the ACT government is positioning the blowing of a whistle as a crime.  Whistles are not weapons, like firearms!

Borobi the blue koala has been announced as the official mascot for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Koala numbers have plummeted by more than two thirds in less than 20 years in south-east Queensland.

One of Australia’s leading koala experts has labelled this week’s unveiling of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games mascot an embarrassment. The sad irony is that koala numbers have plummeted. They like the symbolism of our native animals, but not the actual animals!

Tweed Heads ecologist Steve Phillips said the use of a koala as the Gold Coast’s mascot was frustrating. “What we’ve seen is that progressive development, and the end result is that decline [of koalas] is proceeding at pace,” he said. High human population growth on the Coast has seen koala numbers plummet, due to urban sprawl. Some critics hit out at what they believed was state government hypocrisy in using a “vulnerable” species as the Games’ emblem but conservationists said it could actually work in favour of helping the threatened animals.

Federal threatened species commissioner Gregory Andrews denied the outlook for koalas was as dire as conservationists believed.

“I would disagree that the future is so bleak. The future is much rosier than it has been for a long time,” he said.  Human population on the Gold Coast.

Over the past five years, the population of the Greater Port Macquarie region has been growing at an average rate of 1.62% per annum – driven largely by Australia’s massive immigration rates.